High Dose Methadone User Who Feels Trapped: There is Now Hope

Brief Methadone History

Methadone, an opioid, was first produced in 1939 at the pharmaceutical
laboratories of I.G. Farben in Germany. Named Amidon, and although there
is evidence that some testing was done of the drug, there is no evidence
that it was widely used by the Germans in World War II because they feared
it was too addictive.

After the war, the German patents on Amidon and other drugs were voided
and Amidon was tested and released in the United States by Eli Lilly in
1947 as Dolophine. Dolophine was derived from the Latin word dolor (pain)
and finis (end). Later Dolophine came to be known as methadone. Originally
marketed as a pain reliever, it was not until the 1960’s, when the
number of heroin addicts was accelerating and the negative impact on society
became widely known, did the idea of converting the heroin addict to a
methadone addict become accepted as a treatment procedure.

The Alleged Appeal for Methadone Solving the Heroin Use Problem

Most people know that
heroin users often created many problems for society, for themselves and for their
family. In order to purchase their heroin, many users committed crimes—like
robbery, prostitution and even murder. Other heroin users were spreading
sexually transmitted diseases and also HIV from their contaminated needles.

Many heroin addicts flooded emergency rooms due to overdoses, or because
they got a bad batch of heroin, or because they contracted hepatitis or
just got very sick.

Because of its short half-life, heroin users are forced to obtain a “fix”
every 4-6 hours or they will start experiencing painful withdrawals. (Withdrawal
means that the body is craving the endorphins produced by the heroin and
this leads to sickness. One of our patients who had experienced it said
that it was ten times worse than the worst flu they ever had.)

This is one of the reasons why most heroin addicts don’t even attempt
to hold down “regular” jobs. Besides, few legitimate jobs
provide sufficient income to allow them to pay for their habit.

No one could argue with the idea that heroin addiction is a terrible thing,
and that getting people off heroin is a good thing. Having heroin users
switch to a drug that they could take orally like cough syrup, that was
“legal” and much less expensive, was appealing to many in
our society—and to many heroin users who were tired of being addicted
to heroin.

The Methadone Promise

In summary, switching heroin users to methadone seemed to provide a solution
to society’s problems:

Methadone has a much longer half life than heroin (half-life is the amount
of time before half of a drug taken is excreted from the body), so a person
can normally be given one dose of methadone and this would last until
the next day.

Methadone doesn’t cost $300 a day but only $300 a month and often
this can be paid by a government program.

Heroin addicts no longer have to participate in illegal activities to obtain
their drugs.

Heroin addicts are no longer using needles to inject heroin and this will
reduce the spread of many diseases.

Heroin addicts can switch to methadone and then reduce their dosage of
methadone until they are completely off methadone.

People in society no longer have to feel guilty about not addressing the
heroin addiction problem because the methadone advocates promoted the
use of methadone as a step toward helping the addict stop taking drugs
of any kind.

There is hope for a new life. Call to speak to one of our experienced &
caring detox advisors today! (855) 464-8550

The Methadone Facts – What Really Was Delivered

A 1999 study done at the University of London found that methadone actually
increased the cravings for heroin. Many methadone users supplement their
“high” with other illegal drugs like prescription narcotics
or even heroin. (Illegal drug dealers now can be found around these clinics
because business is brisk.)

Most methadone users are forced to come to the methadone clinics and wait
in long lines every day or at least once a week.

Because the number of methadone clinics is limited by law, some methadone
users have to drive 50-80 miles a day and when they arrive, stand in line
for an hour or more to get their methadone dose that will keep them from
going into withdrawal, and then they go to work.

The first thing a methadone addict often must do when considering moving
is not check on the schools for their children but on the location of
the nearest methadone clinic.

Almost all of the people who switched to methadone from heroin have seen
the amount of their daily methadone dose increase—to 100 milligrams
or even much higher. In most cases the user is now taking a much higher
dosage of methadone than the equivalent amount of heroin that they were on.

Almost none of these former heroin addicts have been able to wean themselves
off methadone. (Some complain that the methadone clinics don’t help
their clients wean off. Apparently many clinics tell the methadone addict
who is trying to taper down but experiences some withdrawal symptoms that
if they are experiencing any discomfort, then the dose should be increased
back to where it was. Some clinics will not taper the methadone addict
down to lower dosages even if the addict wants to. They apparently tell
people that “They are addicts and will always have to take methadone.
But this is not too surprising—the methadone clinics only stay in
business if their clients remain addicted.)

Even if the methadone addict who is now taking 40 to 240 milligrams of
methadone decides that he or she has to stop, there are few rehabilitation
centers that will accept people on more than 40 milligrams per day, so
the person has to either face serious withdrawal pains, find one of the
few medical detox centers that will accept high dosage methadone users,
or stay on methadone.

The real truth is that switching an addict to a different addiction never
really made sense. The real solution was and will always be to help the
addict become drug-free.

The Methadone Trap

In a classic example of “the end justifies the means”, the
FDA was persuaded that even though heroin was illegal, it was ok for methadone,
a drug that is more addictive and creates many of the same effects, to be legal.

Instead of rewarding criminals who smuggled heroin into the country, the
FDA chose to reward drug manufacturers and people who run methadone clinics
so that the same people could continue to be addicted.

There is a heated political debate over whether we should legalize drugs
and take the profits away from the criminals. Yet we have already cut
out the illegal dealers by giving the profits to drug companies and to
methadone clinics—which are limited in number and thus assures their
profitability. The advocates of substituting methadone for heroin are
now aware that methadone is often more addictive than heroin.

No responsible person can dispute the fact that as the doses of opioids
like methadone or oxycodone increase, people’s cognitive abilities
and their reaction times are adversely affected more and more. They can
also experience other side effects such as being more susceptible to illnesses.

Every time a methadone addict gets clean, the only groups that lose are
the drug companies that produce methadone and the methadone clinics who
lose money.

The rest of society wins and the former methadone user wins most of all.

The Solution—Medical Detox And Rehab

Regardless of the reason that someone began using methadone, there are
few reasons why methadone users would not benefit if they could stop having
to use methadone and not have the cravings to use opioids.

There are many effective rehabilitation facilities that are successful
in helping people become drug-free. These rehabilitation facilities are
located all over the world. However, despite the desire of these rehabilitation
facilities to help, few if any will accept someone on a dose of methadone
over 40 milligrams per day. Most require that the methadone user go to
a medical detox center to get off methadone completely before they will
accept them.

Unfortunately, there are very few medical detox facilities that will accept
a methadone patient taking over 40 milligrams a day of methadone. Some
facilities that do accept the patients simply put them in a room and give
them some drugs that help alleviate some of the pain, but the patient
has some very difficult withdrawal symptoms and often leaves the detox
center before completing their withdrawal. Then they go back to the methadone
clinic and the despair grows even more.

Most methadone users who have decided to seek help have tried to withdraw
or at least cut down their dose of methadone in the past. Almost all of
these people were unsuccessful because they began experiencing painful
withdrawal symptoms and stopped their taper. Many of the methadone users
ended up taking more methadone than they were taking when they started
trying to withdraw, and their despair of ever being free of their methadone
habit increased.

The solution is to locate a medical detox center that will assist a person
on a high daily dose of methadone to complete their withdrawal comfortably,
safely and more quickly from the drug.

The Uniquely Effective Novus High Dose Methadone Detox Program

Novus Medical Detox Center has developed a protocol that allows most high
dosage methadone users to step down from methadone and be completely off
all opioids in under two weeks. The highest methadone case that Novus
Medical Detox Center handled was in excess of 240 milligrams per day,
and we have also helped people on over 300 milligrams of oxycodone detox
in under two weeks.

Once they have completed their withdrawal at Novus Medical Detox Center,
the former methadone addict can go to a rehabilitation facility and achieve
their dream—being drug-free. The former methadone user wins and
we all win.

CONCLUSION

When some of his supporters in the Civil Rights movement were expressing
their reluctance to continue the struggle because they didn’t see
that things were really changing, Martin Luther King, Jr. said this, “If
you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you
lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of
it all. And so today I still have a dream.”

Many methadone users still have the dream of being off methadone and being
drug-free.
At Novus Medical Detox Center we have the dream of helping them. There is hope—Novus Medical Detox Center can and will help a person
be free of methadone and able to take the next step, going to a rehabilitation
program, so they can achieve their dream of being drug-free.

We develop an individualized medical detox program specifically for each
of our patients, which means no recovery will look the same. Our delicious
food, nutritional IVs and supplements, and specialized detox protocols
are all designed to quicken the healing process. We understand that various
addictions present a number of issues for the human body, so we create
our IVs and diets to fit the needs of specific withdrawal symptoms.

Our process is all about you, which is why we have private and shared rooms
available for our residents. Each room is outfitted with a TV, telephone,
and access to the internet. We also provide educational classes that will
show you how the drug or alcohol of your choice affects your body. We
believe that to effectively fight off your withdrawal symptoms, it is
important to know what you are fighting against and what to be prepared for.